Destination: Greenwood

Despite the 2001 Commission’s recommendation for reparations in the form of direct payments, the City of Tulsa continues forward with several plans to revitalize the Greenwood and North Tulsa area instead. While the city plans for its 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial commemoration, controversy swirls around the current Centennial Commission — a commission member and U.S. Representative challenged the legitimacy of President Joseph Biden’s 2020 victory, Oklahoma’s governor was ousted from the commission after signing a bill limiting race education, and a lawsuit for reparations against the city forges ahead.

In the last 30 years, Tulsa has been forced to reckon with its racist past. Historians began studying the 1921 Race Massacre after decades of silence from both perpetrators and survivors. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission gave its final report in 2001, detailing the potential for mass graves, the city’s role in the massacre and recommendations for restitution, including scholarships and reparations in the form of direct cash payments to survivors and descendants. Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum describes how his administration is tackling the stark inequality Black residents in North Tulsa face, but some community activists say it’s not enough.

Though Greenwood was thriving in the mid-20th century, another threat to the community’s prosperity loomed on the horizon: urban renewal. With the construction of an interstate highway right through the middle of the district, residents were forced out of their homes, and many moved north. When the city began to integrate, the insular economy that had sustained Greenwood for so long spread out all over Tulsa, forcing Black business owners to close up shop. For those who grew up in this technically integrated — but still socially segregated — Tulsa, the Black Wall Street of the past was no more.

As the dust and ashes settled from the Tulsa Race Massacre, Greenwood residents were still being humiliated by white Tulsa in internment camps across the city. Once released, these residents returned to a district that was unrecognizable — homes, businesses and churches, all burned to the ground. The story of Greenwood didn’t end here, though. Over the next two decades, the district was rebuilt even bigger and better than before — despite efforts from the city of Tulsa to prevent it.

As Greenwood became more prosperous, white Tulsa became more resentful. By 1921, Black Wall Street was flourishing; over 10,000 Black residents called the area home. But the persistent presence of lynching culture hung over the thriving, bustling district. What may have been only a brief misunderstanding in an elevator snowballed into one of the worst acts of racial violence in the country’s history, largely due to the actions of a white-owned newspaper, The Tulsa Tribune. Note: This episode features descriptions of racial violence.

Tulsa’s Greenwood District: a shining city on a hill; a promise of economic and social freedom. Black Wall Street — one of the wealthiest Black districts in the country — attracted Black people from all across the nation to live out their entrepreneurial dreams. But amid these dreams being realized was the cruel reality of the Jim Crow South, the second rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and lynching culture that terrorized Black residents’ day-to-day lives.

Tulsa's Greenwood community has long been defined by the two worst days in its history: May 31 and June 1, 1921 — otherwise known as the Tulsa Race Massacre. But the story of Greenwood didn’t start with the race massacre, and it didn’t end with it, either.
From The OU Daily, Destination: Greenwood is an exploration of Greenwood from its inception to the present-day, documenting its evolution from Black Wall Street to ashes, the devastation of urban renewal and the road to repairing a century of injustice.